Military assessments of climate change

In his scrupulously evenhanded book What’s the Worst That Could Happen? A Rational Response to the Climate Change Debate, Greg Craven makes reference to four different assessments of climate change conducted by organizations with a link to the American military. All conclude that climate change is a serious problem, and that actions must be taken to mitigate it.

The first is the 2008 National Intelligence Assessment, drafted by 16 U.S. intelligence agencies including the CIA, FBI, and NSA. While the report itself is classified, the chairman said that climate change could disrupt US access to raw materials, create millions of refugees, and cause water shortages and damage from melting permafrost.

In short, while the US itself will be relatively better off and with more adaptive capacity, it will find itself in a world where Europe will be struggling internally, large number so [sic] refugees washing up on its shores and Asia in serious crisis over food and water. Disruption and conflict will be endemic features of life.

It also argues that “with inadequate preparation, the result [of abrupt climate change] could be a significant drop in the human carrying capacity of the Earth’s environment.”

The third report is from the Center for Naval Analyses. Their “blue-ribbon panel of retired admirals and generals from the Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marines” produced the report National Security and the Threat of Climate Change. It calls climate change “potentially devastating” and advises that the risks to national security will “almost certainly” get worse if mitigation action is delayed. It also stresses how we don’t require 100% certainty about the precise seriousness of a threat before it starts making sense to address it.

The only fair conclusion that it seems possible to reach about these reports is that they have been ignored. If American policy-makers and members of the general public accepted these conclusions – and interpreted them with the seriousness accorded to matters of national security – we would not be seeing so much doddering around before meaningful action is taken. While the military does have an incentive to scare people, since doing so likely increases their funding, Craven is probably right to claim that the overall bias of these organizations is towards economic strength rather than environmental protection. That, and the calibre of the individuals associated with these reports, seems to provide good reason for taking them seriously.

The Pentagon will for the first time rank global warming as a destabilising force, adding fuel to conflict and putting US troops at risk around the world, in a major strategy review to be presented to Congress tomorrow. The quadrennial defence review, prepared by the Pentagon to update Congress on its security vision, will direct military planners to keep track of the latest climate science, and to factor global warming into their long term strategic planning.

“While climate change alone does not cause conflict, it may act as an accelerant of instability or conflict, placing a burden on civilian institutions and militaries around the world,” said a draft of the review seen by the Guardian.

Heatwaves and freak storms could put increasing demand on the US military to respond to humanitarian crises or natural disaster. But troops could feel the effects of climate change even more directly, the draft says.

More than 30 US bases are threatened by rising sea levels. It ordered the Pentagon to review the risks posed to installations, and to combat troops by a potential increase in severe heatwaves and fires.

The Pentagon released its Quadrennial Defense Review on Monday, a wide-ranging report laying out rising priorities for keeping the peace and, when needed, waging war. For the first time, the report — at the request of lawmakers — considered the significance of climate change for national security, both as a potential source of conflict and a factor in military operations.

A core conclusion:

“Assessments conducted by the intelligence community indicate that climate change could have significant geopolitical impacts around the world, contributing to poverty, environmental degradation, and the further weakening of fragile governments. Climate change will contribute to food and water scarcity, will increase the spread of disease and may spur or exacerbate mass migration.”

“The only fair conclusion that it seems possible to reach about these reports is that they have been ignored. ”

Perhaps the sad truth is the US executive has quite weak authority over the business lobby on domestic issues. This certainly contrasts with their relative freedom to engage in foreign relations, specifically military projects.

Maybe the USA should concentrate on imposing a carbon regime in the rest of the world, and Russia can concentrate on imposing cap and trade on the USA.

A somewhat similar issue may be missile defence. The military can judge better than anyone whether it is actually possible to do effectively. At the same time, making public statements on the matter may seem inappropriately political.

Of course, the armed forces can use fears of both ballistic missiles and climate change as an excuse for more funding. As such, there is something of a conflict of interest.

Implementing missile defence is an agressive tactic – any effective benefit comes at the cost of increasing risks to other states. There is in fact a corresponding asymmetry of risk involved in mitigating climate change – but it runs in the other direction: not mitigating climate change puts weak states at risk more than the United States.

I don’t think the last part of that is necessarily true. States like Bangladesh may well suffer more deaths as a result of climate change, but it is states like the United States, Germany, and Japan that really have the most to lose.

Right now, the citizens of those states are very prosperous and secure by global standards. Climate change could alter their situation, to the point where they have much more in common with Bangladeshis.

The CIA has a special climate change task force, but as we’ve reported here, they don’t want anyone to know about it. Now the science advisory board to the Department of Defense is recommending that the government create yet another new intelligence group dedicated to climate change.

A new report from the Defense Science Board, a committee set up to advise to the Secretary of Defense, calls for the creation of a unit within the DOD that would “concentrate on the effects of climate change on political and economic developments and their implications for U.S. national security.” This new intelligence program would commission the existing CIA task force on climate to “produce an assessment of regional climate change hot spots.”

For years, there’s been a building chorus of warnings on the looming prospect of “climate conflict” and “global warring” that might be set off as greenhouse-driven warming disrupts longstanding weather patterns in already-turbulent parts of the world (think sub-Saharan Africa) or rising seas dislocate coastal populations (think Bangladesh).

Some studies have found relationships between natural climate cycles and conflict. But a recent University of Colorado study, while finding a link between periods of high temperatures and pulses of regional violence in East Africa, also concludes that other social and political factors still, by far, are the dominant drivers of unrest and violence. (The image at right, using data from that paper, maps the relationship over several decades in East Africa between unusual heat, on the horizontal axis, and conflict rates on the vertical. See the caption for details.)